British-designed skyscraper resembles big pants, say angry Chinese

It was billed as China’s answer to the Arc de Triomphe — a spectacular £445m
British-designed skyscraper paying homage to the Asian country’s
turbo-charged economic rise.

The Gate of the Orient in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, China - a new 300m tall dual skyscraper that is joined at the top - has been ridiculed because it looks like a pair of long underpantsPhoto: Quirky China News / Rex Features

3:58PM BST 04 Sep 2012

But even before the 74-storey Gate to the East is complete it has come under attack from critics who compare it not to the famous Parisian war memorial but to a pair of “giant underpants”.

Located in Suzhou, 45 miles west of Shanghai, the 270 yard-high skyscraper is the work of British architecture practice RMJM, founded in Edinburgh in 1956 by Sir Robert Matthew and Stirrat Johnson-Marshall.

According to the company bankrolling the project, Suzhou Chinaing Real Estate Co, the Gate to the East will be completed later this year becoming the largest gate-shaped structure in the world.

“The Gate to the East introduces a dramatic iconic 'gateway’ to the city of Suzhou and represents the significance of the China in the world today,” says a description on RMJM’s website.

The company is a leading global architecture force with offices across the globe including London, New York, Dubai, Moscow and Shanghai.

Related Articles

It designed Abu Dhabi’s Capital Gate skyscraper as well as the Okhta Center, the future St Petersburg HQ for Russian energy giant Gazprom.

The practice has also been doing brisk business in China where, as well as the Suzhou project it designed Beijing’s Olympic Green Convention Centre and the China Merchants Bank Tower in Shanghai.

Initially, the Chinese press agreed, labelling the project an “Arc de Triomphe of the East”. But the tone changed this week following a torrent of online criticism.

“Is it an arch or just plain pants?” wondered the front page of the Shanghai Daily. Headline-writers at state-run agency Xinhua were more direct. “New giant tower branded 'pants’,” they wrote.

“This should be called the Pants of the East, not the Gate of the East,” complained one user of China’s Twitter-like micro-blog Weibo.

Another micro-blogger suggested walking through the Gate of the East would be “humiliating”, “like being forced to crawl between someone else’s legs.”

Some were more risqué with their critiques, pointing out that London’s phallus-like “Little Cucumber” — Norman Foster’s 30 St Mary Axe or Gherkin project— would fit snuggly inside Suzhou’s Gate to the East.

“Together, together!” cooed one of the raunchier posts.

Other bloggers condemned the 4.5bn yuan construction as a further example of the increasingly odd foreign creations appearing on Chinese skylines.

“Any design that can not be sold in foreign countries can come to China and sell at a good price,” wrote one.

“Why does China look like the playground of foreign designers with laughable architecture ideas?” said another blogger quoted by Xinhua.

The Gate to the East is not the first foreign-designed building to fall foul of Weibo’s budding architecture critics. The recently completed Beijing HQ of television station CCTV also stirred up an online storm.

The building — created by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas — earned rave reviews in many architectural circles and a New York Times critic suggested it “may be the greatest work of architecture built in this century”. But Chinese internet users were unimpressed. They nicknamed Mr Koolhaas’ creation “Big Shorts” and posted online photo-mock-ups of the building likening it to a man perched on a toilet.